[oneshot] handshake (hands, shaking)
Title: handshake (hands, shaking)
Pairing: seungri + chanyeol
Rating: pg13
Genre: au, action
Warnings: swearing, off-screen character death
Author: gdgdbaby
Notes: advent calendar day 11, for weatherscenes. pacific rim au. 1,350 words.
People never talk about washed up jaeger pilots. The public prefers not to think about them; it isn't good for morale. Classic defense mechanism: easier to focus on the Jaeger program's wins against the kaiju instead of the losses.
Technically, Chanyeol isn't even washed up so much as he is washed out. Hundreds of pilot hopefuls flock to the Shatterdomes along the Asian coast every month. Most of them are rerouted to mech teams and upkeep, but Chanyeol goes to Tokyo, latches onto the loudest recruit he can find-Byun Baekhyun, from Bucheon-and, through sheer dumb luck, manages to achieve one of the strongest neural handshakes with him that the Director's ever seen.
They begin training immediately, rocket up the ranks as some of the best new talent in the program. It's the best time of his life, running through simulations and learning about the intricacies and capabilities of each Jaeger in the bays: Nova Hyperion's swords-turned-shield, Tacit Ronin's mounted fangblades, Coyote Tango's cannons. Baekhyun hates having to sit still during theory and technical lectures, but Chanyeol loves the history, the chapters in their textbooks about how the program began, the Mark-1 jaegers and their pilots, the precise calibrations every time someone enters the Drift.
"Didn't know you were so studious," Baekhyun says, watching him pore over his notes from the top bunk. Chanyeol flicks an eraser at him and flips to the next page.
It isn't really that he's particularly studious-just that the teaching aide for their history seminar inspires in him a previously untapped well of academic vigor. Kim Joonmyun's one of the main technicians on Coyote Tango, has been working with the jaeger for years, and lets Chanyeol sneak in to stare at the control interfaces in the cockpit, see the shining blades of the nuclear reactor inside.
It's when Joonmyun gets sent home from the front lines that Chanyeol loses it, little by little. Coyote Tango retired because of radiation problems means Joonmyun's in danger from exposure, too, after working so long with the mech. Chanyeol starts making snap decisions in the simulations that pull Baekhyun along and fuck him up too, until one day he just stops showing up. Baekhyun finds a new partner in Kim Jongdae. Two partners, actually. The other one's Do Kyungsoo, and they're supposed to be piloting a three-man jaeger. The last time Chanyeol sees him, Baekhyun's moving his stuff out of the dorm.
"Never pegged you for a quitter," Baekhyun says, and it isn't unkind. It's just sad, which is somehow worse. "I didn't think I'd ever see you scared."
"I'm not scared," Chanyeol says, but Baekhyun's already gone.
Even if he isn't on the roster anymore, there's more than enough work to go around. Chanyeol stays on in the ensuing months as a trainer with the corps, which is how he ends up front and center when Nova Hyperion goes down just outside of Osaka. Jiyong and Seungri's jaeger. One of the escape pods deploys, but the other doesn't. They fish the pod out of the channel after Tacit Ronin's dealt with the category four, and medics rush Seungri off to the emergency room, pumping water out of his lungs.
It takes his body weeks to heal, but he doesn't step foot in a jaeger for almost half a year. Jiyong, glitz and glamour over a steely center, had been the closest thing Seungri'd had to a mentor. The new jaeger being built in Kyoto is supposed to be Seungri's, once the higher-ups could find a suitable copilot for him, but nobody in the program was sure if Seungri even wanted one anymore.
In the months after his accident, Chanyeol catches Seungri walking through the Shatterdome from time to time, the bags beneath his eyes deeper than ever. He walks right up to the giant legs of Fermi Zin or Moonlight Stampede and puts a hand to the wall of metal and just breathes.
Chanyeol's called up to the Director's office in June, after the new jaeger's finished. Victory Inferno. A strong name. It'd been brought to the Shatterdome in pieces a week prior and reassembled in Bay 6. Chanyeol watched it come together, big and beautiful, and a sense of awe had settled over him like a blanket.
He's sitting outside on one of the plush chairs, wondering if they'll be asking him to join the maintenance crew, when there's a sharp rise in the conversation inside the office.
"They're too similar," someone's saying. Sounds like Yang Hyunsuk's nasally voice. "Flashy, overeager, all style and no substance. You remember Chanyeol's specs."
Chanyeol snorts. Of course they'd be talking about him like he wasn't just outside the door. It flies wide open half a beat later, and Chanyeol's ushered in by two pairs of hands. He swallows and steps in, best smile pasted on his face.
Director Lee's sitting behind the desk. He peers up at Chanyeol and ignores Hyunsuk's grumbling. "We'd like to try you out with Seungri, if that's fine with you. Just to see how you two fit together. The last seven viable options-well. Maybe it's better not to say for now."
"Are you sure this is a good idea?" Hyunsuk cuts in, staring Chanyeol down. Seungri pokes his head out from behind him, a curious look on his face.
Chanyeol tilts his chin up. "We'll just have to find out, won't we?" Hyunsuk looks offended. Director Lee hides his smile behind his hand.
Seungri cracks stupid jokes all the way down to the hangar. Chanyeol grins where necessary, but his heart thumps too loud in his chest for him to do much more than react. They must've been really desperate to come to him as a last resort.
Their neural handshake doesn't feel perfect at all. Seungri jostles in his mind and bristles when Chanyeol warns, hey, don't do anything stupid. Don't chase the rabbit.
I'm not the rookie here, Seungri returns, and Chanyeol feels the spike of frustration rise in himself, too. It was never like this with Baekhyun, who seemed able to effortlessly predict his next thought without Chanyeol even trying.
But the Director actually looks pleased when they disconnect. "That was horrible," Chanyeol says, trying to throw him off. Seungri makes a wounded noise from next to him.
The Director shakes his head. "You know what happened to the last seven people who tried to Drift with Seungri?" He smiles when Chanyeol shakes his head. "He chased the rabbit. His last shared memory with Jiyong. Followed him into death."
"So?" Chanyeol asks mulishly.
The Director's beam widens. "You annoyed him enough that he was too busy paying attention to you to think about anything else," he says. "Plus, your drift compatibility was in the 97th percentile. We saw it on the scanners. Your first test run in the new jaeger is tomorrow morning, 0800. Don't be late."
It turns out Chanyeol doesn't even have the opportunity to be late. The next category four emerges from the trench at midnight and incapacitates two Mark-2s fifty miles from shore before making haste for the Japanese seaboard, spewing columns of ice. Chanyeol's getting strapped into the cockpit of Victory Inferno before he even has a chance to fully wake up. Seungri punches him in the shoulder before he dozes off again, a serious look on his face.
"Hey. We have to work together on this, okay?" His chin wavers a little. "You have to trust me."
Chanyeol thinks about Jiyong and Joonmyun and sees the same insecurities reflecting back at him from Seungri's eyes. The last thing Seungri had been doing before he ejected from Nova Hyperion was trying to manually force Jiyong's escape pod out of the cockpit. Chanyeol'd seen the reports. He clenches his jaw as the technicians screw the spinal clamp into the back of his suit. "I trust you," Chanyeol says, and then they go under.
The neural handshake goes through. Seungri bites his tongue at Chanyeol's loud yelling in his head and doesn't chase the rabbit. They take their first step forward into the water as one.
fin
A/N: i should've just gone with the janitor idea you threw out catherine o<-
Pairing: seungri + chanyeol
Rating: pg13
Genre: au, action
Warnings: swearing, off-screen character death
Author: gdgdbaby
Notes: advent calendar day 11, for weatherscenes. pacific rim au. 1,350 words.
People never talk about washed up jaeger pilots. The public prefers not to think about them; it isn't good for morale. Classic defense mechanism: easier to focus on the Jaeger program's wins against the kaiju instead of the losses.
Technically, Chanyeol isn't even washed up so much as he is washed out. Hundreds of pilot hopefuls flock to the Shatterdomes along the Asian coast every month. Most of them are rerouted to mech teams and upkeep, but Chanyeol goes to Tokyo, latches onto the loudest recruit he can find-Byun Baekhyun, from Bucheon-and, through sheer dumb luck, manages to achieve one of the strongest neural handshakes with him that the Director's ever seen.
They begin training immediately, rocket up the ranks as some of the best new talent in the program. It's the best time of his life, running through simulations and learning about the intricacies and capabilities of each Jaeger in the bays: Nova Hyperion's swords-turned-shield, Tacit Ronin's mounted fangblades, Coyote Tango's cannons. Baekhyun hates having to sit still during theory and technical lectures, but Chanyeol loves the history, the chapters in their textbooks about how the program began, the Mark-1 jaegers and their pilots, the precise calibrations every time someone enters the Drift.
"Didn't know you were so studious," Baekhyun says, watching him pore over his notes from the top bunk. Chanyeol flicks an eraser at him and flips to the next page.
It isn't really that he's particularly studious-just that the teaching aide for their history seminar inspires in him a previously untapped well of academic vigor. Kim Joonmyun's one of the main technicians on Coyote Tango, has been working with the jaeger for years, and lets Chanyeol sneak in to stare at the control interfaces in the cockpit, see the shining blades of the nuclear reactor inside.
It's when Joonmyun gets sent home from the front lines that Chanyeol loses it, little by little. Coyote Tango retired because of radiation problems means Joonmyun's in danger from exposure, too, after working so long with the mech. Chanyeol starts making snap decisions in the simulations that pull Baekhyun along and fuck him up too, until one day he just stops showing up. Baekhyun finds a new partner in Kim Jongdae. Two partners, actually. The other one's Do Kyungsoo, and they're supposed to be piloting a three-man jaeger. The last time Chanyeol sees him, Baekhyun's moving his stuff out of the dorm.
"Never pegged you for a quitter," Baekhyun says, and it isn't unkind. It's just sad, which is somehow worse. "I didn't think I'd ever see you scared."
"I'm not scared," Chanyeol says, but Baekhyun's already gone.
Even if he isn't on the roster anymore, there's more than enough work to go around. Chanyeol stays on in the ensuing months as a trainer with the corps, which is how he ends up front and center when Nova Hyperion goes down just outside of Osaka. Jiyong and Seungri's jaeger. One of the escape pods deploys, but the other doesn't. They fish the pod out of the channel after Tacit Ronin's dealt with the category four, and medics rush Seungri off to the emergency room, pumping water out of his lungs.
It takes his body weeks to heal, but he doesn't step foot in a jaeger for almost half a year. Jiyong, glitz and glamour over a steely center, had been the closest thing Seungri'd had to a mentor. The new jaeger being built in Kyoto is supposed to be Seungri's, once the higher-ups could find a suitable copilot for him, but nobody in the program was sure if Seungri even wanted one anymore.
In the months after his accident, Chanyeol catches Seungri walking through the Shatterdome from time to time, the bags beneath his eyes deeper than ever. He walks right up to the giant legs of Fermi Zin or Moonlight Stampede and puts a hand to the wall of metal and just breathes.
Chanyeol's called up to the Director's office in June, after the new jaeger's finished. Victory Inferno. A strong name. It'd been brought to the Shatterdome in pieces a week prior and reassembled in Bay 6. Chanyeol watched it come together, big and beautiful, and a sense of awe had settled over him like a blanket.
He's sitting outside on one of the plush chairs, wondering if they'll be asking him to join the maintenance crew, when there's a sharp rise in the conversation inside the office.
"They're too similar," someone's saying. Sounds like Yang Hyunsuk's nasally voice. "Flashy, overeager, all style and no substance. You remember Chanyeol's specs."
Chanyeol snorts. Of course they'd be talking about him like he wasn't just outside the door. It flies wide open half a beat later, and Chanyeol's ushered in by two pairs of hands. He swallows and steps in, best smile pasted on his face.
Director Lee's sitting behind the desk. He peers up at Chanyeol and ignores Hyunsuk's grumbling. "We'd like to try you out with Seungri, if that's fine with you. Just to see how you two fit together. The last seven viable options-well. Maybe it's better not to say for now."
"Are you sure this is a good idea?" Hyunsuk cuts in, staring Chanyeol down. Seungri pokes his head out from behind him, a curious look on his face.
Chanyeol tilts his chin up. "We'll just have to find out, won't we?" Hyunsuk looks offended. Director Lee hides his smile behind his hand.
Seungri cracks stupid jokes all the way down to the hangar. Chanyeol grins where necessary, but his heart thumps too loud in his chest for him to do much more than react. They must've been really desperate to come to him as a last resort.
Their neural handshake doesn't feel perfect at all. Seungri jostles in his mind and bristles when Chanyeol warns, hey, don't do anything stupid. Don't chase the rabbit.
I'm not the rookie here, Seungri returns, and Chanyeol feels the spike of frustration rise in himself, too. It was never like this with Baekhyun, who seemed able to effortlessly predict his next thought without Chanyeol even trying.
But the Director actually looks pleased when they disconnect. "That was horrible," Chanyeol says, trying to throw him off. Seungri makes a wounded noise from next to him.
The Director shakes his head. "You know what happened to the last seven people who tried to Drift with Seungri?" He smiles when Chanyeol shakes his head. "He chased the rabbit. His last shared memory with Jiyong. Followed him into death."
"So?" Chanyeol asks mulishly.
The Director's beam widens. "You annoyed him enough that he was too busy paying attention to you to think about anything else," he says. "Plus, your drift compatibility was in the 97th percentile. We saw it on the scanners. Your first test run in the new jaeger is tomorrow morning, 0800. Don't be late."
It turns out Chanyeol doesn't even have the opportunity to be late. The next category four emerges from the trench at midnight and incapacitates two Mark-2s fifty miles from shore before making haste for the Japanese seaboard, spewing columns of ice. Chanyeol's getting strapped into the cockpit of Victory Inferno before he even has a chance to fully wake up. Seungri punches him in the shoulder before he dozes off again, a serious look on his face.
"Hey. We have to work together on this, okay?" His chin wavers a little. "You have to trust me."
Chanyeol thinks about Jiyong and Joonmyun and sees the same insecurities reflecting back at him from Seungri's eyes. The last thing Seungri had been doing before he ejected from Nova Hyperion was trying to manually force Jiyong's escape pod out of the cockpit. Chanyeol'd seen the reports. He clenches his jaw as the technicians screw the spinal clamp into the back of his suit. "I trust you," Chanyeol says, and then they go under.
The neural handshake goes through. Seungri bites his tongue at Chanyeol's loud yelling in his head and doesn't chase the rabbit. They take their first step forward into the water as one.
fin
A/N: i should've just gone with the janitor idea you threw out catherine o<-